Steve Benen on Maddowblog contributes some analysis which fairly well backs up my thoughts on how the failure to train our politicians in the basics of societal sectors is leading to disaster:
That’s not a throwaway line. What we have here is the White House’s budget director suggesting it may be time to eliminate the Congressional Budget Office from existence.
Note, Mulvaney may believe that the CBO score on the Republican health care plan is “absurd,” but he’s offered no competing data. Either the far-right budget chief doesn’t have alternative numbers, or he does have competing data that he prefers to hide out of embarrassment.
What’s more, given that Mulvaney just unveiled a budget plan with a jaw-dropping $2-trillion mistake – a colossal screw-up he says was intentional – perhaps the OMB director should avoid questioning the reliability of others’ budget analyses for a while.
But it’s the broader disdain for objective sources of information that really rankles. I’m reminded of a piece from the Washington Post’s Paul Waldman in March:
This is straight out of President Trump’s playbook, one that tries to convince everyone that there’s no such thing as a neutral authority on anything. If the CBO might say your bill will have problematic effects, then the answer is not to rebut its particular critique, but to attack the institution itself as fundamentally illegitimate. If the news media report things that don’t reflect well on you, then they’re “the enemy of the American People.” If polls show you with a low approval rating, then “any negative polls are fake news.” If a court issues a ruling you don’t like, then it’s a “so-called judge” who has no right to constrain you.
The Teapot Dome Scandal:
Crap like this happens when you’re ignorant, again and again.
And I’m sure Mick, Donald, & most of the company really don’t understand why things are structured as they are structured. The reason is that the government is not in place to make a profit, but to govern, and governing has little to do with how corporations run.
In this particular case, the CBO exists to evaluate proposed legislation in terms of at least the costs, and in the case of the AHCA, how well it accomplishes its putative goal, all in a non-partisan manner. This is just one aid in responsible planning and legislating.
In the corporate world there are other ways to do this – mainly by letting companies try things and if they fail & sink, too bad for them.
That doesn’t work in the government world. There’s little competition, and when there is it must be strictly regulated in order to avoid negatively impacting the citizenry.
So when Mick says,
“At some point, you’ve got to ask yourself, has the day of the CBO come and gone?” Mulvaney said…. He said, “The days of relying on some nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office to do that work for us has probably come and gone.”
The proper response is, “No, Mick. Your time has come and gone. It was back in the 1800s. And the CBO was originated to stamp out scum like you.”
